Tonality and (the) "beyond": Elgar's Gerontius and string quartet Piacevole

Book section : Chapter

This chapter explores Edward Elgar’s evocation of “the beyond” – the state of purgatory – through musical means in his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (1900). Commonality but also key differences, between the composition’s prelude to Act II and a later work, the second-movement Piacevole from Elgar’s String Quartet, op. 83 (1918), open up a fascinating hermeneutic window: To what extent might one say that Elgar’s perception of the beyond changed towards the end of his creative life? Much of the chapter’s argument hinges on Elgar’s treatment of tonality: Where does he go “beyond tonality” in these works, and where does he only appear to do so? Departing from received critical opinion, the chapter argues that the Piacevole is more tonally complex than Gerontius. Concomitantly, its portrayal of the beyond is more disquieting. Because of the necessarily technical and abstract nature of discussing – as opposed to feeling – tonality, the chapter develops an interdisciplinary framework to clarify its argument. The author draws on a playfully ambiguous image by Edward-Burne Jones – one of his Bogey drawings – as a means of interpreting the differences between Elgar’s use of tonality in the two works under examination.

Authors: Chandler, O

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Host title: Art, Music, and Mysticism at the Fin de Siècle: Seeing and Hearing the Beyond
• Pages: 213-230
• Chapter number: 11
• Series: Routledge Research in Art History
• Place of publication: New York
• Publication date: 2024-07-29
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003247661-15
• EISBN: 9781003247661
• ISBN: 9781032145662
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter